Sadness and Solutions

What comes across your social media feeds? Is it emaciated, giraffe-like Vogue models in otherworldly couture strutting runways without expression on their faces or food in their bellies? Or is it celebrities in naked dresses pouting for the camera whilst we sit behind our machines earning pennies? Or is it influencers talking about make-up and OOTDs, or other inane topics while around the world people are suffering? Or are you swayed by the males with come-hither glances spouting AI ideas as if it is wisdom? Or the 'Beccas' of this world flaunting unimaginable wealth while billions live in poverty with food insecurity and no access to clean water?

Has your feed been sanitised and optimized to present you with a world view that is not inconvenient?

Ignorance is still most decidedly bliss, and the 1% are laughing all the way to the World Bank.

How will you know the state of the world if you live in a bubble?  Yes, you will be protected from what’s happening with the rest of humanity outside of that bubble, but is this really how we need to be living?

 How will the blinders fall if you are happy in your vacuum, feeding on culture and traditions that keep us separated and locked in servitude?

But despair does not have to be the end of the story.

The first step is awareness. If your feed shows you only gloss and glamour, it is not reality, it is distraction. Designed on purpose to keep you oblivious and desensitised.

Start small, start slowly, but choose differently. Start including deeper conversations within your friend and family groups. Have conversations beyond the mundane. Follow grassroots organisations, climate activists, educators, and poets, scientists, doctors and philosophers that speak to humanity and life, not trends and buzzwords.

Your screen can be a window into the struggles and triumphs of humanity, if you choose it to be.

The next step is conscious consumption. Every like, every share, every click is currency. Stop feeding the machine that thrives on vanity and spectacle. Instead, amplify the narratives that awaken, that empower, that challenge your comfort.

Ultimately, move towards building connection. Blinders fall when you connect across differences when you listen to the voices of those unseen, when you read stories that unsettle, when you open your world to empathy instead of apathy.

And then comes action. Not grandiose, not impossible, but steady and human. Donate where you can. Volunteer. Educate. Vote. Share truth. Spark conversations that ripple beyond your circle. One act of awareness is resistance. A thousand acts of awareness become change.

Finally, reclaim agency. The 1% may laugh, but their laughter depends on our silence. When we disengage from distraction and re-engage with one another in solidarity, we reclaim what it means to be human, not just consumers, but citizens of a shared planet.

Sadness is real, but so is solution. The feed you follow, the life you lead, the choices you make...that is your power...But that is the beginning of another story, one where you do not look away.